Winsome • began May 20 2024
17. "His nature is not remorseless, but to escape from a trap he has to act without pity."

16. "Clearly the mind is always altering its focus, and bringing the world into different perspectives. But some of these states of mind seem, even if adopted spontaneously, to be less comfortable than others. In order to keep oneself continuing in them one is unconsciously holding something back, and gradually the repression becomes an effort. But there may be some state of mind in which one could continue without effort because nothing is required to be held back."

15. Before the huge concrete overpass I saw two crows at play, nosediving and shooting fast up through the air, each in his turn, tracing a sort of flattened DNA double helix. And then they were gone, outpaced by my car, but just beyond the expressway, there were hundreds & hundreds of pigeons, exaltations of them, street doves, the colony that dwells on the red tile roof of the In N Out. They, skittering particles, massed in a few slow clouds that made their way among the grey sky. & these birds too disappeared behind me in turn. And at the next intersection I saw a sole pigeon passing swift above the crowded street. & I had a startled realization then : the gas station wind carressing my damp body, skateboarding solidly buffeted by a more intensive breeze, & running up the stairs unable to control my squeaking joy. The happiest unshared moments of my Winter and Spring have involved a sense of swift motion.

14. "He would give her a chain of beads or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart? The force of her own gift alone drove her to it."

13. I have felt I'm like a gull, & I have located several reasons for this feeling, but it wasn't until tonight, months on, that one of the more obvious ones hit me. I mean, I knew birds had wings, I knew they used them to rise up off the ground ; and so also that they are in this way free from our earthly obstacles ; and I knew a desire in me somehow like that. But tonight I reflected on another side of their flight. Sure, they use it to bypass the wall & fence & drainage ditch, but beyond that, they go a-wing to migrate somewhere, somewhere unreally far away even just looking at a map, & so the reality of the distance is even more unreal. How long have we, our species, dreamt of flight — & not only the ease & sensuousness of it, but the greater sense of boundlessness of one's life and of the self ? And in our airplane lifetime it's actually possible — what a revelation.

12. "The gardens of Fernham lay before me in the spring twilight, wild and open, and in the long grass, sprinkled and carelessly flung, were daffodils and bluebells, not orderly perhaps at the best of times, and now wind-blown and waving as they tugged at their roots."

11."Love is not a debtor's prison
You don't have to serve a sentence
To pay back what you've been given"

10. Note to self : cultivate isolation. It is one of the most valuable substances you have.

9½. I am doing the moving in Summer, right at its edge where it is already beginning to sort of tumble into Fall, but I'm doing it for Winter, with the Winter in mind : that is when the act will ripen on its branch, amid a forest of naked and evergreen trees, in a world of frost & snow.

9. "When what I came to do is done
And we all feel a holiday cheer
Then I hear my swan song singing
It is winter, then it is a new year
So I follow weathers together
And my best brother
With things just getting good"

8. My ginormous shampoo bottle is on its last legs. As I aggressively slammed the topper, it made a sound like the sneeze of a duck with terrible seasonal allergies.
( I felt a little irked by repetition of the stem word "aggress" in this entry, so I almost changed the adverb in question to "forcefully," with a feeling of satisfaction, as it would make for better reading, I think, but then I realized leaving the repetition in makes my state of mind more transparent. )

7. Deleted most of the text message history off of my phone, barring some friends, which took a while. At first I would pause to consider many of the conversations, but as it went on, I got swept up in the sheer momentum of deletion. ( Here's hoping this now-invigorated spirit of losing helps me continue to trim down my physical possessions. ) I did pause when I reached my late grandpa's contact though, reread the scant history, and felt a melancholy pang of conscience before deleting it. Let's see. There's also this poet from grad school I left unanswered for a year who'd last sent me a link to a published piece — just didn't get around to it. There are a few people I think it "would be nice" to see once more before moving, and he is one of them. Who else is on that list ? S., Mira, maybe Jess. I find her difficult to speak with, but also the last time we saw each other I was so much more insecure, so it could be different now. Regardless, I find something charming & inspiring in her open displays of aggression against others. The sort of sharp edge of her is what I admire most. Her fashion very intentionally pulls this into focus too. I used to consider her the most stylish person I'd ever met.

6. "she always felt you can’t know a place, really, where you don’t feel the wind blowing free."

5. Finally got around to watching Brokeback Mountain last night at 12am. I got it for one dollar at Savers a year or so ago, & I've just been waiting for the right moment. I had tacitly known I "needed to see" this movie for even longer, since the premise of conflicted gay cowboys is obliquely inspiring to me in terms of my fanfiction. After all, motorcyclists are basically cowpokes : I think that's the idea behind Easy Rider anyway. Last night felt as appropriate a time as any, what with June coming up around the bend. It's definitely a movie that came from a piece of literature ( by Annie Proulx ), with its more freewheeling, characterdriven plot. So back to literature it goes as inspiration. It's not a perfect movie by any means, it perhaps isn't even great, but it has many remarkable and great features. The uneasy border between love and hate in a shamefilled person is so convincingly drawn by Heath Ledger, it's incredible. I think it may also contain one of the most intense cinematic kisses I've seen ; I heard afterwards it caused one of the leads to break his nose.

4. "My Ever-Changing Moods." Awfultired, new&strange, happytired, anxioustired, pleasanttiredwithmytiredpleasantHen : slept. Groggy, happychatty, fearful&selfloathing, trusting&excited. My feelings have been all over the place today, owing to poor sleep ( which exacerbates my mental illness ) & being late on my injections ( which tends to make my mood swing ). I'll remedy both of these issues tonight, & tomorrow should be less disorienting. Still, I'm glad that I wrote, I read, & I stayed away from mindless distractions today. The day has been somewhat confusing, but I would call it a good one.

3. My soul feels like a saxophone playing fills during a celebratory but reflective chorus. I am calm but I am impatient. I am calm because I am happy, but I am impatient because even through this happiness I know my incompleteness : I want things I cannot now have : like being elsewhere, like an inexpressible sort of freedom.

2. I used to prefer the coherent symbolism of understanding my sexuality in terms of a strict role but I realized that means nothing to me. This is real life, not fan art.

1. Now that I survived downers and anesthesia, & now that my face is healed & I can't consider it a site for a potential rapidly escalating infectoin, my Obsessive thoughts have few medical places to go. There is one spot : a patch of carpet beside the chair I now sit in, writing this. The story of that patch is that my cat — who never had worms but who my mind insists on saying had worms because I can't remember the less catchy name of the disease that caused her to get shaved and have scabs all over her for months — once sat there several months ago. Now anything that touches this patch of carpet I handle with insane care, as though it were a radioactive biohazard or something. Today my Domo-kun hat fell on it. . . I'll retrieve him and be a good patient. ( I'm my own exposure-therapist & so I'm my own patient. )
     But my Obsessiveness is like whack-a-mole. If the reasons for my healthfears disappear, then my Obsession just affixes itself to questions of morality or friendship or something else inherently invisible and ambiguous. Morality is the worst of these, and thankfully it's stayed away from me lately.